WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, FDCA, il Cantiere #23: Solidarity beyond borders - Peace and self-determination for the people of the Middle East - Alfio Nicotra, National Co-President Un Ponte Per. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On the map of the Middle East the conflict is spreading like an oil

stain. Those who thought that the war would stop in Gaza - a territory
now reduced to rubble - and the West Bank must think again. ---- The
domino effect is there for all to see. In Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and
Yemen there is fighting in several places even though, like tightrope
walkers, the little bit of diplomacy that survives the new dogma of war
as a natural resolution of crises is keeping the most instincts in
check. incendiary. But the rope is so tense that it risks, sooner rather
than later, breaking.

The Palestinian question, considered dead and buried before October 7,
has forcefully returned to the agenda. All the architecture built for a
peace without Palestinians, the so-called "Abraham's Peace" between
Israel and the Gulf petrocracies, has been shattered. Just as the idea
cultivated for almost three decades by Tel Aviv was shattered - from the
assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the hands of a
Zionist extremist onwards - of an Israeli security based on the most
technologically advanced security technologies, on muscular strength of
the fourth strongest army in the world and on the apartheid legislation
with which it was intended to neutralize any desire for revolt of the
Palestinian people.

Of course, on 7 October Hamas and its allies were guilty of crimes
against humanity by indiscriminately targeting civilians, but no fight
against terrorism can legitimize the destruction of 80% of the buildings
in Gaza, the deportation of 2.3 million Palestinians, the systematic
attack on everything that, under international law, should enjoy
protection and should be excluded from war operations (hospitals,
schools, churches, mosques, headquarters of NGOs or humanitarian
organizations, refugee camps, etc.).

The silence and complicity of our Government and those of the European
Union in the face of the massacre of civilians produced every day by the
IDF (the Israeli armed forces) is not just fearfulness towards the
Netanyahu government: it is a real promissory note in white given to
Israel which hides an objective racist undertone. Would we have ever
allowed the London government to raze the Catholic neighborhoods of
Belfast in the name of the IRA's war on terrorism? Or should the
government of Madrid, in order to strike the ETA militants, displace the
population of San Sebastian in the Basque country by military force?

The blaming of all the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip for having voted
for Hamas in 2006 is unacceptable from every point of view. The dignity
of the international community was safeguarded only by the initiative of
the South African government (later followed by a dozen countries) to
denounce Israel to The Hague for violation of the genocide treaty. UN
Secretary General Gutierrez - more than a hundred workers from United
Nations agencies were killed in the field by Israeli bombings - tried to
invoke the ceasefire as an indispensable precondition but was blocked by
the right of veto unexpectedly used by the Use to protect Israel.

In this context, the ejaculation on "two peoples, two states" repeated
like a psalm by our rulers to save their consciences now appears
useless. This is not only because the territories on which, according to
the Oslo agreements, the Palestinian state was supposed to arise have in
fact been eaten up by the new colonies, but also because of the failure
of the idea of the "Nation State" which in the Middle East meant the
creation of states invented by 'high by the colonial powers. Since the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire, confessional states, pure ethnically or
by religious affiliation, have often been the cause of civil and power
wars that have bloodied the whole area.

The idea of a plurinational, multiethnic and plural space also on the
religious side, in which all citizens have equal rights and equal
duties, is appearing among several Arab and even Israeli intellectuals.
The idea of coexistence, of overcoming the borders that are now
increasingly closed between peoples, the construction of an inclusive
confederalism that is being tested in the experience of the North East
in Syria, demonstrate that it is not just a utopia grown from Abdullah's
intuition Ocalan, but something concrete as well as a great hope for the
entire Middle East.

If a meter of ice does not form in a single night, then we also have the
duty to remember when the powerful of the earth decided that the world
had to embark on the path of new wars and genocides.

The watershed for us at Un Ponte Per is January 17, 1991, when with the
"Desert Storm" operation it was decided to unleash a global war against
Iraq, wiping out the hopes of peace that had opened up following the
fall of the Wall of Berlin and the end of the balance of terror between
East and West.

It was the choice to clear the war into international relations - among
other things for the first time broadcast live on television almost as
if it were a colossal war game - that poisoned the following decades.
 From the planning of the war, from his attempt to make it "drinkable"
for public opinion - humanitarian wars, for democracy, to prevent
genocide, etc. - to the new strategic concept of NATO which converted
the Western alliance into a sort of global gendarmerie at the service of
the richest countries to move towards the marginalization of the UN and
the replacement of international law with the law of the strongest. It
is from this womb that the current international insecurity was born,
the wells of hatred were filled, fanaticism and sectarian tendencies
were seen growing: Al Qaeda and Daesh (ISIS) are daughters of this
breeding ground.

Between 2001 and 2021, global military spending doubled, making the
world even more insecure. Among other things, these are rapidly updated
data, pushed up by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and by the fact that
thousands of unprecedented missile and artillery warheads have poured
into Gaza. The request to all NATO countries, including Italy, to bring
military spending to 2 percent of GDP as soon as possible is destined
not only to bring social policies to their knees but also to unleash a
new and excessive global arms race.

This "world disorder" based on the green light for wars and weapons is
obviously at the service of an increasingly unjust world. Since 2020,
the five richest men in the world (Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff
Bezos, Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett) have more than doubled their
fortunes - from $405 billion to $869 billion - at a rate of $14 million
per year. 'now, while 5 billion poorer people have seen their condition
overall unchanged if not worsened.

According to the recent Oxfam report , at current rates, within a decade
we could have the first trillionaire in the history of humanity, but it
will take over two centuries (230 years) to put a real limit on poverty.
For  nearly 800 million workers   in  52 countries,   wages have not
kept  pace with inflation . The  related wage bill   saw a  decline in
real terms of 1.5 trillion dollars   in the  two-year period 2021-2022 ,
a  loss equivalent to almost a monthly salary   for each worker.

This is why for international solidarity workers - not surprisingly
criminalized by the political class and mainstream media - moving in
this context means working to counter this trend towards global
injustice. It means first of all seeing in the civil societies of the
Middle Eastern countries in which Un Ponte Per operates, the
protagonists of their redemption, emerging from a charitable approach
which too often becomes the other side of the coin of neocolonialism.
Over the years we have created educational, health, humanitarian,
cultural, dialogue and social cohesion projects which you can view on
the web page www.unponteper.it.

  Over time, Un Ponte Per's intervention has changed, adapting to
changes in the contexts in which we operate, always maintaining the same
objective: promoting peace and human rights and preventing new
conflicts. Equally unchanged is the commitment to ensuring the quality
of its projects, paying particular attention to the support and
self-determination of the populations and communities involved, to the
valorisation of the partnership, to the respect of subjectivities and
above all to the political and social demands of the people and
organizations we collaborate with. Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq were
crossed, for example, by a mobilization of boys and girls who took to
the streets (in Iraq for very long months and at the cost of hundreds of
victims) to contest the corruption of the parties in power, the
sectarian division of society, ask for dissolution of private and
religious militias, stop the destruction of the environment carried out
by multinationals (think of the extractive policies that are poisoning
entire territories), ask for the right to strike and the right to
education for everyone. Young societies - half the population is under
20 years of age - which, as in the case of Iraq, have grown up never
knowing true peace.

In Syria we operate in the territories liberated from ISIS and the Assad
regime with our partner, the Kurdish/Syrian Red Crescent, and with the
local administrations of "democratic confederalism". We have always
placed at the heart of our initiative the role of women, their
emancipation and direct protagonism as a revolutionary engine of change
in society. "Woman, life and freedom" is not only an extraordinary
slogan that challenges patriarchal society but it is a real political
program.

 From these struggles we learn, aware that bridges are made to be
crossed in both directions and that solidarity does not have just one
meaning. In a world where humanity seems to be lost - as Vittorio
Arrigoni wrote from Gaza - remaining human alongside those who struggle
is easier and more instructive.

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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